


Deepest Blue

by stardropdream



Category: xxxHoLic
Genre: F/F, Implied Relationships, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-24
Updated: 2013-02-24
Packaged: 2017-12-03 09:59:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/697054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardropdream/pseuds/stardropdream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How it was that she became something other than human.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Deepest Blue

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on LJ March 18, 2011.

She finds her washed up on the shore, not quite moving. Long, blond hair drifts against the sand, wavered by the wind. Her body is twisted uncomfortably, her fin—yes, she could see now that it was a fin—half in the water, shifting scales occasionally.   
  
She stands there, in the sand, staring at her for a long moment—  
  
And then she steps forward and kneels. “You are injured.”  
  
The mermaid shifts her eyes, and looks at her. She doesn’t say anything for a long moment, but she knows to be patient.   
  
“… Yes,” she says, at last. “I cannot swim.”   
  
Her fin twitches, as if to resist such a statement, but it is in that twitch that she can see the mermaid’s wound. It must have bled a lot, but now it has closed off, just slightly, a long gash along the length of her fin. She breathes out, and the mermaid looks up at her—waiting.   
  
She shifts closer, and with some maneuvering and shifting, manages to lift her up, cradling her to her. The mermaid blinks at her, watches her with an eerie understanding.   
  
“I’ll find a place to hide you. If the people of my village find you, they will be afraid.”  
  
“You are not afraid?” the mermaid asks as, slowly, she begins to walk, carrying this mermaid to the coves and ocean caves near the northern bank of the beach.   
  
She shakes her head. “I am not afraid.”   
  
  
\---  
  
  
She finds a cave close to the water but not impossible to leave at high tide. The water rushes in and out, bathing the mermaid’s tail. She seems to find pleasure in that.   
  
“I will not drown, if I were submerged,” the mermaid says. She shifts underneath the other’s hands, letting her position the mermaid in a spot that would be comfortable, near the water, but not too near.   
  
“But you could be carried away by the tide, if you were too close,” she explains. “You’d be dead in the water.”   
  
“Perhaps,” the mermaid says, still watching her. “But perhaps I do not wish to live anymore.”   
  
She stops, and looks up at the mermaid, frowning. “Why not?”   
  
“The person I love,” the mermaid says, looking up at the ceiling of the cliff’s cave. “She is no longer here.”   
  
She remains silent. She watches the mermaid. The mermaid lowers her head, as if she will cry, but no tears come.   
  
“Tohru,” the mermaid says quietly, and she realizes that she is speaking to someone who is not there. The words fall away into an ancient language she cannot recognize.   
  
She stands and leaves the mermaid in peace.   
  
  
\---  
  
  
She returns to the ocean the next day, with medical supplies and food. She does not know if human medicine will work on a mythological creature, or what exactly the mermaid will eat, but it was worth a try.   
  
It is high tide when she arrives, and she slogs through the channels of rising sea water to the cave. The mermaid has not moved from her position, her tale twitching, pathetic, in the half-submergence of water. The mermaid looks up when she enters, watching her with an opaque expression, eyes wide and sad.   
  
“You returned,” the mermaid says, as if mystified.   
  
“Yes,” she replies.   
  
“You left yesterday,” the mermaid continues.   
  
“I was sad,” she says. She sets down the food and medicine. “I brought things. I did not know if any of it will be of use, but…”  
  
The mermaid reaches out and takes the fish wrapped in the leaves she brought. She unwraps it, studies the leaves carefully, and then studies the fish.  
  
“It’s… strange,” says the mermaid. She studies it. “You cooked it.”   
  
“Oh,” she says. “I suppose you would eat it raw.”  
  
She wonders how the mermaid knows of fire, but perhaps she is a mermaid who has known of the human world before.   
  
As if sensing her thoughts, the mermaid picks at the cooked fish and sighs. “Tohru taught me many things.”  
  
“Tohru was a human?” she asks.   
  
The mermaid nods.   
  
She looks down, fiddling with the medicine and bandages, doubting herself again.   
  
“What is your name?” the mermaid asks.   
  
She looks up, surprised. The mermaid is staring at her, and reaches out a hand, touching at a lock of her hair, curled and the color of the sand—much like the mermaid’s. She breathes out, surprised by the touch. But she does not recoil.   
  
She tells her.   
  
“What is yours?” she asks.   
  
The mermaid looks at her. Then closes her eyes.   
  
“Saya.”   
  
  
\---  
  
  
“What was Tohru like?” she asks one day.   
  
Saya tilts her head to the side, and sighs out. Her eyes look glassy for one moment, until she remembers herself. No tears fall.   
  
“Beautiful,” she decides on. “Kind. Intelligent. She was… my everything.”   
  
She sits, watching the mermaid.   
  
The mermaid closes her eyes, her thoughts elsewhere. “I’d known her for so many years. But even so… a human cannot live as long as a mermaid.”   
  
She shivers. She is well aware of her own age, well away of her own mortality. She sees it in all her people, in all living things.   
  
“How old are you?”  
  
“Centuries old,” the mermaid says. “I no longer know the exact age.”   
  
Something catches in her throat. A small quiver of envy bubbles in the back of her throat. She can feel it there. She can feel that she desires it.   
  
“So she died.”  
  
“Yes,” Saya says. “I’d known—she was growing older. I would visit her. We would spend hours together on the beach and—one day…”  
  
She waits.  
  
“One day, she never arrived,” Saya continues after a moment. “I waited for weeks.”   
  
Saya lowers her head and this time she does cry—but the tear is the color of blood, dripping down her cheek and crystallizing into a pearl. Saya’s hand curls around it, and she holds it tight to her chest, above her heart.  
  
“Tohru…” the mermaid whispers.  
  
She does not ask her more questions. She leaves without a word.   
  
  
\---  
  
  
The questions drift in her mind—  
  
If the stories of mermaids are true, couldn’t Saya have given Tohru a longer life?   
  
She wonders if it would be right to ask.   
  
  
\---  
  
  
She asks it of her a few days later.  
  
Saya only shakes her head. “Tohru did not wish to give up her humanity.”   
  
She stares at her.  
  
Saya stares back. “It would have been too much for her, to do what she’d have to do in order to gain the things I could give her—a longer life. Not immortality. Only a longer life. She did not wish to be in a world without me.”  
  
She does not know what that has to do with anything, and tilts her head to the side curiously.  
  
But Saya does not elaborate. She is looking at the moon hanging low on the horizon, casting silver light across the water. “And I do not wish to be without her.”   
  
  
\---  
  
  
She lingers on it: to do what was necessary to gain that power—  
  
  
\---  
  
  
It isn’t until a few days later that it strikes her that she has a mermaid at her mercy. A mermaid.   
  
She knows the stories of the mermaid—the abilities they’re meant to posses, the things they can give to a human. Saya has hinted at it as much in their talks. She is curious. She wishes to know. She wants to know what it is that Saya can give her, and how to gain it—even if it were to be taken by force. She thinks she would be willing to do that. She thinks that the greed in her chest is one that she should nurture, one that she could easily satisfy.   
  
She watches the ocean from her village home, and her eyes reflect the moon. She smiles to herself, thinking of all the things she would be willing to do, if she could possess the mermaid—  
  
She has it in her possession. It could be hers, all of it—  
  
Even if she had to force it—  
  
And as soon as she entertains these thoughts, she recoils. She blinks her eyes. She does not know what it would mean to do these things to Saya.   
  
She does not trust herself—she stays away from Saya.  
  
  
\---  
  
  
Weeks pass. She resists the urge to visit the seaside, though she feels it calling to her, feels the desire in the pit of her gut—greed, desire, longing—  
  
She stays away.   
  
  
\---  
  
  
But the bad omens come. People in her village begin to die, the crops do not grow as quickly as they once did.   
  
The villagers whisper of omens from the sea.   
  
She sees the aged villagers dying, sees the age creeping into all their eyes with every passing day.  
  
She flees.  
  
  
\---  
  
  
The mermaid—Saya—looks up when she returns to the cave. Their eyes lock.  
  
Saya tilts her head back, and laughs—broken, distracted. “So, it is that time, is it?”  
  
“What time?” she asks.  
  
“The day you are no longer unafraid,” Saya says. “I can see it in your eyes. What will you do—now that you fear me?”  
  
“I do not fear you,” she lies. But something clenches in the pit of her chest. Desire curls and burns against her throat. Envy. Greed.   
  
“Not even a little?” Saya asks. “How is your village?”  
  
“Poor,” she says, and steps out of the water. The air is heavy with sea-salt.  
  
She understands—she is afraid. She has never been so afraid.   
  
“Will you kill me?” Saya asks, quietly.   
  
“I do not know,” she replies, staring down at the mermaid who, despite the passing of weeks, has not fully healed. She thinks that the mermaid can swim now, but simply refuses to. She has lost the will to swim, she thinks.   
  
Saya just smiles, that sad smile of hers—like she sees something beyond this realm. She thinks, Saya is thinking of “Tohru”.   
  
“I no longer wish to live,” Saya says. “Won’t you kill me? I can be of use to you.”  
  
The desire spikes in her heart. “The stories about mermaids… are they true?”  
  
Saya smiles. “Why won’t you find out for yourself?”   
  
Her tail flicks. Her eyes flicker.   
  
“I…” she begins.  
  
“Are afraid?” Saya asks, and the tone is not mocking—but it is not comforting, either. “I cannot defend myself.”   
  
She swallows.   
  
“If you eat my flesh, you will become powerful,” Saya says.   
  
“Eat your…”   
  
Her stomach coils and churns. Her eyes widened.   
  
Saya stares at her. “Does that disturb you?”  
  
She does not answer.   
  
Saya smiles, eyes still flickering in the dim light of the cave. “If you peel me back and eat until there are only bones left, you will be young and beautiful forever. You will have more powers than you would know what to do with. I can see it in your eyes—you wish for that. You are afraid, and yet you wish for that.”  
  
The mermaid watches her.   
  
“All humans are the same. They fear what they do not understand, and yet how they desire it.”   
  
She swallows and takes another step.   
  
“You are just like every other human. You are good-hearted, I can see that. But you are selfish, as well.” Her eyes follow her face. “I do not begrudge you that. I am selfish, too, that is why I was reborn as a mermaid, I believe. I am selfish, and cannot truly forgive Tohru for leaving me behind, leaving me to be the one to live in a world without her.”   
  
She takes another step closer towards Saya.   
  
Saya’s eyes flicker. “You desire what I can give you. So take it.”   
  
The mermaid’s smile dims just slightly and she tips her head.   
  
“Take it.”   
  
This time, she does not hesitate. She takes the last few steps to the mermaid’s side. She kneels down and curls her hands around the mermaid’s throat. She squeezes, slowly, pushes the air from her lungs and drags her, forcefully, from the water. The tail flickers, just slightly, and though Saya promises no resistance, her body tenses up beneath her touch.   
  
She squeezes harder, ducks her head, and rips.   
  
  
\---  
  
  
She promises no resistance, but her body writhes beneath hers, and she screams in pain until she finally rips hard enough to silence her.   
  
  
\---  
  
  
In the aftermath, she cannot smell the sea-salt over the salt tang of blood. Her hands are stained, she is sure her face is as well. Her body is shaking, but it is humming with something she has never felt before.   
  
She is left with only bones, but it is not enough. She wants more. Her whole body shudders. She cracks the bones in search of lingering moisture—  
  
Anything, anything—


End file.
